Listen to (…) the Master’s admonitions and incline the ear of your heart…
This is how the Rule of St. Benedict begins.
The rule speaks directly to the heart – it urgently addresses the one who responded to the call of Christ …
God’s call
accepted from the bottom of my heart is absolute, it requires leaving everything to embark on the path with Christ… Do you love me more…? (J 21,15).
Religious vocation is a gift offered freely and freely accepted. This deepest expression of God’s love for you requires from your side your response of total love for Christ.
St. John Paul II
Seek God
Saint Benedict asks a question to those who knock on the door of a convent: are you really looking for God? Searching for God fills all monastic life, just like the entire Christian life: God, my God, I am looking for you, my soul wants you (Ps 63).
This search fills everyday prayer, spiritual warfare, being alone with God…
School of God’s service
School – because this is the way of constant discovery, learning, growing up, maturing – to open our hearts more and more to the gift of contemplation, to the gift of God’s infinite love…
You will never be alone on this road. Formation takes place in the community.
Formation
Formation is a time of human and spiritual growth. It is achieved through active participation in the life of the community, and based upon three pillars:
– prayer:
liturgical (Office and Eucharist)
adoration of the Most Blessed Sacrament
personal prayer
– lectio divina
– meditative and prayerful reading of the Word of God
– participation in community work
This is a unique times:
– entering into an intimacy with the Word of God, learning the monastic tradition, Rule of St. Benedict, writings of Mother Foundress, liturgy, and Eucharistic spirituality
– building bonds
with Christ,
with the community, in a climate of mutual respect and sisterly love.
Monastic life through the experience of prayer, loneliness, silence reaches to the secrets of human existence … It allows us to regain a piercing and serene look that hurts by love the Divine Spouse and whose purity allows to see God’s face in the light of faith…
As they progress in their monastic life and faith, they run down the path of God’s commandments with an extended heart and the unspeakable sweetness of love.
(The Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue)
Cult of the Eucharist
A cloistered nun is constantly in the presence of the Lord, her Bridegroom, and she maintains an uninterrupted dialogue with him. As Benedictine nuns of Perpetual Adoration, the center of our lives is the cult of the Eucharist. In union with Christ, participating in His Sacrifice, which he places in the worship of the Father and for the salvation of the world, we desire to satisfy the glory and holiness of God’s majesty in the Blessed Sacrament.
In the daily prayer after the Mass, we say the words of the act of offering:
Unite us with you as the hosts, introduce to your sacrifice and offer us with yourself. Let us die for ourselves and for everything that you do not like.
Be willing to burn us completely in the fire of Your love and make our entire life an everlasting oblation of praise, adoration and love to Your Father and You in the Holy Spirit (…)
(from the act of reparation)
According to the Mother Foundress, Catherine de Bar, by faithful observance of the Rule, a Benedictine acquires all the attributes of the Host and enters a very close relationship with Jesus in the Divine Eucharist.
Initial formation
Initial formation is divided into several stages:
Postulancy
is a time of deeper recognition of the vocation to our Institute, development of human and Christian values, and getting to know life in the monastic community..
Novitiate
lasts for two years and begins with a ritual of taking on the veil, during which the novice receives a new religious name. The novice learns to undertake the essential requirements of monastic and contemplative life, enters into the spirit of adoration, sacrifice and reparation according to the Rule of St. Benedict and the Constitutions. This is a time of special focus and listening.
Temporary profession
is emitted for three years and renewed annually up to the completion of five years.
A professed nun receives a monastic habit, uses the spiritual privileges of the monastery.
The monastic profession in our Institute includes:
A vow of stability (stabilitas loci) by which a nun vows to remain and work with a specific monastic community.
The vow of obedience (oboedientia) unites a nun with a permanent bond to the saving will of God.
A vow related to the way of life according to the Rule of St. Benedict means a vow of converting morals (conversatio morum) obliging to a way of life according to the Rule of St. Benedict also includes the commitment of the evangelical chastity and poverty.
By the vow of perpetual adoration, a nun undertakes to keep the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament uninterrupted, day and night.
Perpetual profession takes place 5-8 years from the first profession.
In a perpetual profession, nuns can receive the consecration of virgins, through whom they are mystically married to Christ and dedicated to the service of the Church.
You be her glory, joy, desire, be her comfort in sorrow, advice in uncertainty, defense against harm, permanence in oppression, abundance in poverty, food in fasting, medicine in illness. Let everything be found in You, whom she chose above all…
(from the rite of consecration of virgins)
Place in the Church
During his historic visit to one of the monasteries of our Institute, Saint John Paul II described our vocation:
You, dearest sisters, have a special part in the Mystical Body of Christ. But this privilege costs, this privilege is connected with the sacrifice, the sacrifice of your life, devoted completely, unconditionally to the Savior. I am happy with this meeting, I am happy that I am among you, in your enclosure, in this place of prayer, where the Eucharist lives, where the Eucharistic Christ is constantly – day and night – adored, adored in your hearts, words, feelings, in your minds. I am united with you in this adoration, in your prayer, which is the prayer of the entire Church throughout the world. You, in your prayers, in your hearts, I would say: in your hands, you bear the fate and destiny of the Church and the world, more than we, who now challenge these fates and events in their historical context. That is why I recommend myself and the entire Church to your prayers and to your total dedication to the Lord in your contemplative and Benedictine vocation.
(St. John Paul II to the Benedictine nuns of the Blessed Sacrament)
